You’ve seen it everywhere on our site, at our events, on our shirts… tattooed on our arms… and although the Jerry can has become a mainstay for our staff and supporters, we want to let you know what it actually is and why it’s a symbol of the charity: water mission.
Simply put, a Jerry can is container for fuel or water. Many people in developing countries use it to haul and store their drinking water. The standard five-gallon Jerry can weighs about 40 pounds when full.
To us, the Jerry can is a symbol of the water crisis. Millions of people around the world spend hours each day with one strapped securely on their backs, held tightly to their hips or balanced on top of their heads. The Jerry can is a part of their everyday lives. It accompanies them on long walks to a water source; for women in Sub-Saharan Africa, this is at least a three-hour ordeal. It is the keeper of a precious resource they must make the most of each day; many families use just one five-gallon Jerry can each day.
But the bright yellow Jerry can is also a symbol of hope to change the water crisis.
What if we could make it so that all the water collected in Jerry cans around the world was safe enough to drink? That it could bring health and opportunity for communities in need? That is our mission.
To most people, this simple metal or plastic can means “gasoline,” and rightfully so — the first Jerry cans were introduced as gasoline containers by the German military at the start of World War II. These five-gallon cans, also called “Jeep cans” or “blitz cans” (or, in Germany, “Wehrmachtskanisters”) were made of steel and usually sat in the back of vehicles as a reserve tank of gas. It’s said that Adolph Hitler anticipated the biggest challenge to taking over Europe in WWII was fuel supply. So Germany stocked up.
As Germany moved through Europe and North Africa, so did their thousands of gasoline cans. These cans proved to be dependable and durable; soon, countries all over the world were adapting them to haul and store liquids, coining them “Jerry cans” because of their German origin (“Jerry” was a snide name for a German WWII soldier). New water container designs emerged but nothing could top the strength and simplicity of the original rectangular, X-marked Jerry can.
By the 70s, the plastic Jerry hit the market. Steel Jerry cans weigh 10 pounds empty; a plastic Jerry can weighs 3.5 pounds, and is much cheaper to manufacture. While the military uses metal cans, people all over the world now buy fuel or water for domestic use in plastic Jerry cans.
Since plastic cans ship easily and inexpensively, you can find fuel for sale in bright yellow or blue Jerry cans in just about any developing country. And when the gas is gone, families resourcefully keep the can — and after a good wash, it becomes a primary water container.
Before plastic Jerry cans, many communities we work in used heavy clay pots or metal containers to haul their water. Their switch to Jerry cans in the last few decades makes sense: a recycled plastic can lightens up the three-hour walk many take each day to collect water.
We invite you to also take up this symbol to raise awareness about the nearly one billion people who live without clean drinking water. Check out our new Jerry can merchandise. Use our Jerry can banners, Twitter backgrounds and print materials to spread the word. Pass on the Jerry can and teach others that we can change the water crisis in our lifetime.
Amhara, Ethiopia.
I arrive in Ethiopia’s Amhara region after rainy season has just swept through. The fields are lush smears of gold and emerald. Every piece of land seems to be covered in a crop. In vast acres of teff, maize, sorghum and corn, specks of white scarves appear and submerge again — the farmers bent over their crops, harvesting their livelihood.
From what I picked up in conversations from the fields to the villages, farmers in Amhara make a pretty decent wage.
But country life isn’t easy.
Those who aren’t in the fields — usually kids and moms — spend most of their day preparing food, collecting firewood, herding animals and taking care of other chores necessary to keep their families healthy.
Mintamir, 18 years old, is one of them. Like a lot of the farm kids from my hometown in rural Michigan, she’s been handling chores since she was old enough to walk. When these chores were taken care of, only then would she get to school.
But unlike most farm kids in the U.S., of all her responsibilities, the most time-consuming and physically difficult was collecting water. She’d spend much of her morning walking to an open pond, then hauling her Jerry can home to her house. Her family would make the most of just a pair of these five-gallon containers of water each day. That meant only enough water to bathe (at most) once a week and wash clothes every two weeks.
“We didn’t even wash our faces or care for our personal hygiene,” she tells me. “We were ashamed of our body odor. But also, we’d get sick and then we didn’t focus on school. We’d be tired and sleepy.”
Mintamir has met kids from another life; the city. Her school was a mix of country and town folks. As she learned about their lives — more available water, no cattle to watch over, no crops to tend — she grew anxious. These other kids had time. School was their main focus. What if she fell behind? What if her chores, her illnesses, her waning self-confidence, set her back?
“We are country girls,” she says. “Because we were born here, we’d have to care for animals and the farm and also have to fetch water. We’d be late to school.”
Mintamir pushed through. She’d get up early, she’d stay late, she’d do whatever she had to in order to finish her education. But she’s the exception, not the rule. Our partners tell us that many kids in this area miss school to collect water; the dropout rate for girls is especially high.
Such is the way of country living, many believe. Girls like Mintamir accept that this comes with growing up in a farming family. But they also know that one of their most demanding chores could be relieved completely if they had a clean water source nearby.
So do we. In 2010, our local partners A Glimmer of Hope and ORDA (Organization for Rehabilitation and Development in Amhara) built a charity: water well right in the middle of Mintamir’s village.
She explains that families can now accomplish more each day. Kids can finish collecting water before school and buckle down on their studies instead of juggling multiple trips for more water later in the day. They can come to class clean and ready.
“The society is changing here. Now, we’re using our time efficiently,” she laughs. “Our time now has become like… a computer! Efficient. It’s very different, very different.”
And with clean water so close, she says families have doubled the amount of water they can use each day. People bathe regularly and wash their clothes every week.
Like the city people, she says.
“Now we are the same! We drink well water, too, and feel clean,” she says, speaking for the younger kids around her who are still in school. “When the bell rings, we attend class at the same time.”
She laughed.
“I am just like them now.”
Mintamir has plans to move from her small village of Minchit soon. She’s going to Bahir Dar, Amhara’s second-largest city, to pursue more education. She’s a farm girl at heart, but she’s eager to keep learning. Now that Minchit has water, she hopes more girls in her village will have that chance, too.
Oct. 2011 | Mali
Mali is famous for a number of things: the legendary city of Timbuktu, the extraordinary mud mosque of Djenné, an amazing music scene, among many other things -– but water supply isn’t one of them. Although the Niger River arcs through the southern part of the country, most of the land is covered by the Sahara and water is scarce…
… unless you know where to look.
I got to spend some time last month traveling in Mali around Segou and the capital Bamako learning about the Malian water situation and how some people are working to deal with it.
They’ve learned that 30, 40, 60 meters down, there are aquifers that can provide drinking water to rural towns and fast-growing urban communities. The communities I saw, even in rural areas, are densely settled and are ideal for community distribution systems. This is essentially a small utility that brings a high level of water supply to the community.
The new water source also brings income to women -– I’ve seen women-managed communal gardens growing cash crops and women running or working at urban water kiosks. The close proximity of the water saves time for collection, and the cash generation helps women with the planned and unplanned expenses in life.
But what I found most encouraging about the solutions in Mali is the commitment of the communities to making it work: water pumps are powered by fragile solar panels, which provide energy for free, but are vulnerable to kids with rocks.
In other places I visited, the panels would be cracked within the month… not in Mali. The water systems are well protected, and the kids are very well behaved. In other countries, getting people to pay for maintenance of water systems is also a profound challenge… not in Mali. Water committees set appropriate tariffs for water fees and collect the money regularly. When asked, they produce bankbooks on the spot with up-to-date records.
The value Malians place on water is palpable –- and they protect it as a resource critical to both their daily lives and their future. Mali is maintaining its water systems, developing skills to manage water supply both nationally and in communities, and monitoring its aquifers to make sure they aren’t depleted too quickly.
This is a context where sustainable solutions are just within reach. And with the right support to the Malian people, we can hope to see water supply become another reason Mali is famous.
From Lira, Uganda
As I write this in central Uganda, the streets outside are thick with mud, miring trucks and people. Uganda is almost through the rainy season here, with maize growing strong, healthy cattle grazing and farmers busy preparing to harvest their crops in a few months.
Some 800 miles to the east, the situation is painfully different. Several failed rainy seasons have developed into a full-blown drought, and famine has followed closely behind. Along with the rest of the world, staff at charity: water have been following this situation as it worsened, wondering what we can do to alleviate the suffering in East Africa. charity: water has always worked to bring potable water to people all over the world, from the jungles of C.A.R. to the altiplano of Bolivia. This past July, charity: water approved a grant for nearly $1 million in drought-stricken Turkana, Kenya, to bring water to 45,000 people. A good start, but this drought has made it blazingly clear that we need to preemptively address drought- prone areas, rather than react when droughts strike.
As news of the famine spread, the global community began responding. Water, food, shelter and medical supplies are moving to the refugee camps along the Somali border. Unicef, the I.R.C., Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Save the Children, the World Food Programme and many others have sprung into action to bring relief.
This response work is critical, but it’s important to remember that this disaster need not have become a catastrophe. What shifts it from an environmental disaster to a human catastrophe is humans. The Kenyan Member of Parliament from Turkana, Mr. John Munyes, reported that deaths among his constituency were not caused by a shortage of food, but by a “lack of logistics.” The Somali militant group Al-Shabab has been restricting access to humanitarian aid for their own purposes. The food is available, the water is available — it’s just not getting to the people who need it.
I believe that one of the defining characteristics of development is a widening margin between comfort and catastrophe. In much of North America, Europe and parts of Asia, that margin is wide and stable; reinforced with the social structures we don’t even see — infrastructure, readily-available health care, credit, food security, etc. In much of the developing world, that margin is vanishingly small. One failed crop, one illness, one job loss can push people from living to struggling to live. Each of these disasters — drought, followed by constriction of aid, followed by overcrowding of camps — further narrows that margin of safety until it disappears altogether, and catastrophe follows.
We know drought will come. Drought is a fixture around the world; Russia and Australia have had severe droughts, and the American Midwest recently went through a drought far worse than it experienced during the Dust Bowl. This was a hardship, but not a catastrophe. The challenge then lies with how we plan for and mitigate droughts’ impact in the developing world. How do we keep it in the realm of “disaster” without tipping into “catastrophe”? If the job is done well, can the margin be widened enough so that drought becomes a “hardship”?
Frankly, we — the NGO community — don’t have a very good track record on this front, as we spring from disaster to disaster. We can’t predict where the next earthquake will come, but we have a pretty good idea of where and when drought will strike.
This current drought in East Africa did not appear overnight, but has been a long time in the making. Had the global development agencies invested sufficiently in water programs earlier, this drought may not have become a famine. Therefore, before the next drought strikes, we need to start investing in the drought-prone areas of the world. We know it’s coming, and we need to get ready.
We can never forget that hundreds of millions of people need water every day. They may not be suffering from drought now, but they still struggle to provide their families with clean water. The rains are falling in Lira this year, but that’s no guarantee rain will fall again next year.
This is the constant water crisis.
For every person who gets sustainable water, that margin between comfort and catastrophe gets a bit wider.
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